PowerPool Community Call #1 Recap — April 28, 2023

PowerPool completed its 1st Community Call AMA and discussed PowerAgent v2 Testnet and features to inform the community.

If you missed the call, We prepared this Recap article for you!

Spaces Recording: https://twitter.com/powerpoolcvp/status/1652347994111459331

Speakers:

Gordon Gekko — Chief Strategist @GordonGekko_CVP

Vasily Sumanov — Head of Research @Vasily_Sumanov

Recap:

Gordon: Well hello, I just want to welcome everyone here since there hasn’t been a PowerPool AMA for quite a while. The main reason for that is that PowerPool has effectively been in sort of stealth mode developing the entirely new version of the PowerAgent v2 Automation Network.

It has long been apparent that automation is key to DeFi and that an automation network enables basic LST asset management, it’s a powerful combination, and that’s pretty much what we have been developing. We have a plan for version 2 of the automation network and we have a plan for the asset management and both of these interlocking plans will drive value to the $CVP token. I think probably the best thing to do to start is to introduce Vasily, our Head of Research, and he can give us an overview of the new PowerAgent v2 Automation Network and we can then take it from there.

Overview — PowerAgent v2 innovations

Vasily: Thank you for the introduction to this AMA. Automation, which is currently mostly centralized internal dedicated bot-type automation is on fire now. It is something really big and a lot of protocols have become critically dependent on automation tools. But currently, most of these protocols are still just using their own centralized bots. All these centralized automation services are quite fragile and can fail at very inappropriate moments. They also raise trust issues. This is why on-chain automation should be done on a decentralized global scale by a fully permissionless network that can guarantee trustworthy transaction execution, offering a much more robust option than standalone keeper bots.

We have been building PowerAgent v2 to be secure with the main focus on delivering guaranteed execution with Keeper selection based on genuine randomness. This comes down to crypto-economic mechanisms, to Keeper selection algorithms, and provisions for Keeper slashing. The majority of automation options lack trust-building mechanisms like automatic slashing of Keepers. In other cases, if a Keeper fails, only the multisig from their team or their Community can authorize slashing. From our point of view, this solution is not acceptable. The trustworthy Keeper network should regulate itself, work without any human-based input, and automatically slash Keepers that are failing to sign transactions or that engage in any malicious behavior.

While developing PowerAgent v2 we focused on 3 main things: Keeper selection logic, making automatic slashing possible, and making PowerAgent easily accessible for both Keepers/node runners and Job Owners. So, let’s review these key points.

Random Keeper Selection

PowerAgent v2 is designed with Keeper selection algorithms based on genuine randomness. Random Keeper selection is incredibly important, because if it’s known who will be the next Keeper selected by the network, that critically undermines its security. The main purpose of the PowerAgent network is to protect Job Owners from Keeper malicious behavior and non-execution of their Tasks. Random Keeper selection is incredibly important for these goals.

Moreover, I can say that in its architecture, PowerAgent v2 is quite flexible. Different Keeper selection algorithms can be added based on randomness using the Randao mechanism for networks that support Ethereum PoS consensus, or using the commit-reveal mechanism for EVM networks that don’t have Ethereum PoS consensus.

We now have full documentation in GitHub describing how PowerAgent v2 works, and all the code and recent research-based details are there. We will also share the updated documentation on GitBook shortly. It is at the final level of completeness, we have added almost all the new information, and there is a lot of new information there. This is the first point, and I can say, that I don’t know any other Keeper network that uses random Keeper selection.

Keeper Eligibility — Minimum Stake Weighting

PowerAgent v2 also has added a Keeper selection weighting function. If Keepers stake $CVP tokens beyond the minimum stake, they become eligible to execute higher-specified Jobs or transactions on the network. But the question arises: How does the size of the Keeper’s $CVP stake correspond to the eligibility of that Keeper to perform different Jobs and earn different levels or volumes of fees?

The easiest way to add differentiation of eligible stakers is to provide an option for the Job Owner to set the minimum floor for the eligible Keepers' stake. For example, if the Job Owner has a high-value task to assign, they can specify that only Keepers with more than, say, 100,000 $CVP staked (as opposed to the minimum 1,000 $CVP stake) will be eligible to execute the given task. Keepers with below the specified minimum stakes would be ineligible to participate in that Job and cannot earn the larger fees associated.

Cost of No Execution

But simply using transaction value can be a very artificial and distorting barrier, so we made the PowerAgent system more natural. We decided to use the estimated cost of no execution as the essential metric for a task. Now if you are the Job Owner of some kind of automation task, you can make an evaluation of the potential damage of no execution to you as a Job Owner/client protocol.

The protocol, owning the Job, defines the Job as one or more transactions. If transactions are not executed at the appropriate time and/or on the defined event trigger condition, the Job Owner can usually estimate the potential cost of no execution. A Job Owner facing losses from no execution can then qualify the Keepers based on the $CVP stake according to the cost of no execution, rather than just transaction size. PowerPool has now published an academic article on this topic.

So this Keeper selection function maximizes the probability of being chosen if the stake of the Keeper is not far from the cost of no execution, and if it exceeds the cost of no execution, the probability grows a bit, but around the point of cost of no execution, the probability is still quite high.

So if a Keeper has a stake of say, ten times the cost of no execution, the probability of being chosen will be slightly higher than a Keeper with one times the cost of no execution. If a Keeper’s stake is much, much less than the cost of no execution for any given job, the probability to be chosen for that job is negligibly low.

Therefore, the new algorithm allows the selection of only Keepers that have some moderate stake at least, so that slashing can cover at least the part of cost of no execution. This type of function is known as a sigmoid function. Keepers with stakes much below the cost of execution for a given task have almost no chance of being selected.

This is a special function that is also gas optimized. We made it very gas efficient to ensure that it wouldn’t spend too much gas from Keepers. So this will be a really gas-efficient solution.

Long story short, the new algorithm bonds the Keeper stake to the cost of no execution in a quite efficient statistical way. If the Keeper who executes the task fails, his stake is expected to be around the cost of no execution. If the selected Keeper fails, the stake will be automatically slashed. Nobody has a stake size advantage and in the future, we even can consider covering any losses of Job Owners using these slashed $CVP tokens. This is not decided yet, but it’s an option we can employ in the future.

Keeper Stake Optimisation — Risk & Return

We are working towards adding algorithmic pricing of Keeper’s resources, but this work is not published yet. It’s only theoretical work at the moment, but we plan to apply this work to PowerAgent a little bit later. The issue being addressed is that the bigger the Keeper’s stake, the more risks he faces in terms of slashing, and in terms of $CVP volatility as well. So although the Keepers with bigger stakes should earn more fees, the bigger fees for execution should cover all these risks. Ideally, for larger $CVP stakes, larger fee income should balance larger $CVP exposure risk.

All this is quite logical for the highest value jobs, the jobs involving millions of dollars and where the cost of no execution is quite big. Clients should pay more for the guaranteed execution covered by the big $CVP stakes from the Keepers with big stakes. Our research found that if you have two Keepers, one with a big stake of 1 million $CVP and another with a minimum 1000 $CVP only, these two Keepers, evidently the execution resource is different because the responsibility is different. So one Keeper can do higher value tasks than the other can because their stake is too small.

What we plan to implement next will help balance the risks of Keepers with their expected income and also make the Job Owners pay more for the automation of high-value Jobs. This is the key point for making PowerAgent Network financially successful by ensuring large enough cash inflows even for the Keepers with the highest stakes because it makes no sense to have a high stake and earn quite little income.

Testing & Keeper/Node Acquisition

We have been testing a lot both in stealth mode and even in open testing. Most of the intensive testing was done in November, December 2022, and January, February 2023 using 11 Keepers/nodes. There were eight nodes launched by the Community and three by the team. We did a lot of tests, found bugs, and fixed them. But the issue we faced at this time was that launching a Keeper/node was not an easy task for people not already deeply involved in Ethereum node running. We discovered that combining PowerAgent with an Ethereum node, rather than a public IPC, is quite important because it decreases the risks of slashing since Keepers cannot rely on public RPCs that can be shut down at any moment.

For example, Infura Quick node, or all these node-as-a-service services that are quite widespread now. People use them and in the majority of cases they work really well. But there are some well-known public cases that we cover in our future article, for example, Infura fails when a lot of protocols cannot work while the node is not running. So we think that individual staking is the future not only of Ethereum and consensus but also of Keepers and Keeper nodes.

So we decided to pursue bundling collaborations with big packagers/distributors of blockchain node infrastructure software. Our first bundling partner, DAppNode, is a quite big company and we hope to make an official statement and press release about this partnership next week with all the details.

The key point from this partnership is that the PowerAgent node runners will be able to launch the PowerAgent node with just one click starting from DAppStore. So it’s two clicks. You launch the PowerPool PowerAgent node. If you also need an Ethereum node, you can easily launch it too. So Ethereum node runners who already have a full Ethereum node via solo-staking can also easily launch a PowerAgent automation network Keeper node using this DAppStore.

We are targeting all Ethereum NOs/validators because adding PowerAgent allows them to earn more from their nodes by doing almost nothing different. The PowerAgent Keeper node consumes very few resources. In comparison with Ethereum nodes, only a very tiny percentage of resources will be additionally used by the Keeper node. So now every Ethereum node operator/validator will be able to add the PowerAgent node to his node stack, register on the network and begin signing transactions to earn even more ETH. PowerAgent is now an additional wealth-generating opportunity for Ethereum noderunners becoming Keepers that costs almost nothing extra, especially if the initial $CVP stake is available via grants.

To onboard more Keepers, we plan to provide at least 100 small $CVP grants to any Ethereum node operators who want to run a PowerAgent node, a minimum amount of $CVP just for staking and checking it out, getting some experience, and providing us feedback. At a minimum, this should build more brand awareness for PowerPool/PowerAgent and encourage Ethereum stakers to improve their understanding of how all of this works.

And I think it can be quite good because the focus is on decentralization and on easiness of launching a PowerAgent node. Because if something is very complicated, nobody will use it. We understand that we need to make it as simple as possible and hide all complexity, hide all technical features and all this tech innovation under the hood, just make it work and work for more protocols.

So, Gordon, I think maybe I will pass the mic to you and maybe you can share some insights on planned asset management DeFi automation use cases, to be built on top of PowerAgent.

Gordon: Thank you very much. That was a very deep dive into PowerAgent v2 and what makes it new and different. I think the main point is that PowerPool DAO has original research, leading-edge technology and is probably the leading generalized trustworthy decentralized autonomous automation solution in the marketplace.

And not only that, but deploying PowerAgent automation Keeper nodes is a no-brainer for most Ethereum node runners because it’s just pure ETH profit on top of what they’re already doing. So we are hopeful that particularly home stakers and independent Ethereum node runners of all types will join the DAO, get actively involved in PowerAgent, and become PowerAgent node runners.

The current priority is recruiting more Keeper/node operators, getting them up and running. We have some incentive programs designed to facilitate that.

What I’d like to do right now is zoom out to capture the big picture. That was a terribly deep dive into something that a lot of people don’t know anything about, namely blockchain automation networks. Let me just zoom out and start from the whole crypto universe to give it perspective.

The center of the whole crypto universe, we all know, are the various L1s and L2s that are the core of crypto. But what most people don’t know is that these don’t really do useful work without two ancillary networks alongside. One of these ancillary networks is an oracle network to provide off chain data. Everybody knows ChainLink and everyone knows that ChainLink has established a dominant position in oracle networks. And that the $LINK token probably is one of the best long term holds you can have, even though it doesn’t seem to do much in the short term.

But what really isn’t very well known is that the other kind of ancillary network that facilitates useful crypto is a autonomous, decentralized trustworthy automation network, exemplified by PowerAgent. In the very early days of crypto, everything was manual. All the manipulations and transactions were manual. However, almost all of the data required to make those decisions in most cases was right there on the chain, or available from oracles. So the only thing that was missing was a reliable way to trigger automated execution from outside the chain. And that’s what automation networks do.

The tagline that PowerPool often uses to introduce PowerAgent is that ‘smart contracts do not execute themselves’. Task automation includes specifying all the conditions that determine whether/when something should happen. All the data, event triggers, time, whatever, is usually available either on chain or from the oracle network. So automation is a no-brainer for DeFi, and it’s been coming, but doing it correctly depends on a fully trustworthy decentralized, autonomous, open source automation network. And that’s what, essentially, PowerAgent v2 is.

There is some overlap between what oracle networks can do and what automation networks can do. That overlap is not so much about off chain data, but more about on chain validation. Oracle networks will always be the ones that go out and get the off chain data, and ChainLink will be dominant. But for a lot of simpler transactions, as ChainLink enables fees and uncaps $LINK staking, the price of $LINK starts to rise, and a lot of tasks will become increasingly expensive to do with $LINK.

PowerAgent will be ready to pick up these kinds of tasks. No one really knows what the potential size of the automation market is, or how it will be divided between ChainLink, Gelato and PowerPool/PowerAgent. These solutions each have radically different architectures. They have different sweet spots and there’ll be a lot of marginal overlap between where developers decide to assign their tasks. This is one of the reasons why the $CVP token could behave (with a slight lag) somewhat like the $LINK token, which is to say that until you enable the fees, and until you uncap the staking, the token doesn’t necessarily move that much, but in the long run you know, it’s a good investment.

PowerPool DeFi Asset Management Focus: Baskets of LSTs

PowerPool is also an asset management DAO and designing and operating the PowerAgent automation network gives PowerPool a big advantage in launching and operating leading edge DeFi investment vehicles we call PowerBaskets & PowerVaults.

In the past, various protocols (including PowerPool) have created multi-token investment vehicles called ‘indexes’. These are just relatively passive, fixed weight groupings of tokens in a basket, but not called a basket. They were usually called ‘indexes’. Why? Well basically they shouldn’t be, but they were. Long story, (see our FAQs).

The point is that passive ‘indexes’ at best can harvest some intrinsic yield (net of fees) from the tokens in the baskets. They don’t have the automation capabilities to try to farm for extrinsic yield and they certainly don’t have the automation capabilities to pursue things like arbitraging. When Ethereum switched to Proof of Stake and everyone realized that a Liquid Staking Tokens (LST -not D) format for staked Ethereum was a good thing to have, PowerPool decided to use automation to create an actively-managed diversified basket of staked ETH LSTs ( there are probably about 20 of them being prepared right now). Obviously, we’ve all heard of Lido, we’ve heard of Rocket Pool, but there are many more LSTs coming and they all use various different forms of technology with different risk/return profiles.

The interesting thing about liquid staking tokens is that diversification in a basket really adds a lot value because why? Basically higher yield (intrinsic AND extrinsic) but also much lower risk. Why higher intrinsic yield? Well, because Ethereum validator rewards ( and related MEV) are randomly awarded. They’re randomly assigned. So staking ETH is like entering a lottery. If you hold a basket of LSTs that give exposure to every single validator in Ethereum (over 500,000), you’re 100% sure you’re going to get some share of those rewards. If you hold a token that has 50% coverage of all of the validators in Ethereum, you’re about 50% sure that you’re going to get a share of all the rewards. So, combining lots of different LSTs into a basket actually increases your opportunities for yield. If you invest in one single LST, you will get only some intrinsic staking yield and you have to do your own farming.

Why lower risk? Well, the other thing that people probably haven’t focused on enough is there are a lot of security risks with liquid staking tokens because over the years a lot of validator nodes may have become compromised and the hacks just haven’t been executed yet because hackers couldn’t unstake from Ethereum. But now that they can, there’s going to be some considerable smart contract and hacking risk associated with LSTs. But you’ll also be 100% exposed to that LST smart contract and its underlying Validator keys. So if your single chosen LSP gets hacked, a chunk of your investment will just disappear. If instead you buy into a ~10+ LST PowerBasket, your maximum exposure to a hack is dramatically reduced. In addition, slashing and other forms of risk that occur at validator level are greatly diluted if you invest in a broadly diversified basket of LSTs.

So unlike many previous attempts to create ‘indices’ in crypto that never really even performed as well as just holding ETH, in the case of liquid staking tokens, a broadly-diversified, automatically managed basket really does add value. And it adds even more value if you can automate external farming of extrinsic yield and even more value if you can automate peg arbitrage as ten or so leading LSTs slosh around between different layers and different DEXes and different lending sites. There will be minor depegs all over the place from supply and demand forces. An automated basket can take advantage of cross LST arbitrage in a way that an individual LST investment cannot.

So, overall we are fairly confident that our actively-managed, broadly diversified LST PowerBasket token, automated with PowerAgent (which we call $LSTETH) will potentially be seen as the highest yield, lowest risk and most liquid way to hold staked ETH. It will be pledgeable. Composable. You will be able, I believe, to eventually mint over-collateralised stables like LUSD. The teams behind Liquidy have already forked Liquidy to start minting LUSD with individual LSTs, and soon a basket of LSTs as collateral for minting should be possible. That is a very big potential market in terms of TVL and fees, both automation fees for PowerAgent Keeper noderunners, but also management fees for the PowerPool Treasury, shared with $CVP stakers.

Wrapping up

PowerPool started off focusing on DeFi automation. PowerPool wrote some of the earliest automation optimization vaults like Yearn Lazy Ape ($YLA) and things like that, but rapidly realized that rather than do specialized one off automation, the best thing to do is to create generalized automation network in large part because then you can do work for a wide variety of asset managers, promoters, protocols, you can have a client base to share the cost of the network.

And so that’s why this period of stealth has been dedicated to developing PowerAgent v. 2, which incorporates all the learning and experience that PowerPool has accumulated in years of launching and operating automated vaults and baskets. PowerPool has launched, operated at scale and already deprecated probably more automated vaults and baskets than anybody else. So it’s not something we don’t know how to do.

Now that we have the leading automation network technology, the logical thing to do was develop a couple of parallel asset management options addressing the very largest TVL markets. So we needed to define some investment vehicles, some asset management examples that would generate early fees for PowerAgent nodes and serve as a basis for PowerPool to continue to innovate and improve the capabilities of PowerAgent. PowerBaskets of LSTs are, or will soon be, the biggest markets/highest TVL on all EVM POS chains and PowerAgent will ultimately be deployed on many different EVM POS chains.

And so we decided to focus on two asset management vehicles to drive fee income; one a PowerVault ($LUCY)and one a PowerBasket($LSTETH). The PowerVault, $LUCY, many of you may have heard of, is based on the $LUSD, the fully decentralized, ETH backed, stablecoin. $LUCY provides very elaborate yield optimization features on $LUSD. The PowerBaskets, $LSTxxx, can exist on all EVM POS chains. So whatever we do on ETH, we can then duplicate on BNB and many other EVM POS chains. In fact, there’s over a billion dollars worth of ETH stuck on BNB right now that can’t be staked. So just rolling out an ETH basket on BNB is a relatively easy win.

But we can also then roll out another basket of about 5 BNB liquid staking tokens underpinning the BNB chain, which will eventually look more and more like Ethereum. BNB will try to have more and more decentralized validators. They will try to move in that direction. So one could argue that a basket token of BNB based liquid staking tokens would also add considerable value to people who are big believers in BNB.

In summary, actively-managed (as opposed to passive ‘indexes’) PowerBaskets of liquid staking tokens are a strong overlap with PowerAgent. They ensure a basic automation fee income on every EVM POS chain, and if they get anywhere near the TVL that they should, they could well be a major contributor of income to PowerAgent node operators across all EVM POS chains.

In addition, the ETH PowerBasket overlaps with the capabilities we already have to optimize yield on $LUSD via $LUCY. We hope in the long run people will be able to mint $LUSD from our $LSTETH basket tokens. And that will effectively make PowerPool a ‘bank’ for people to do everything they need to do in terms of saving/spending to/from ETH. We hope also that people will be able to mint/redeem our basket tokens using generic widgets that anyone can put anywhere. So basically anyone can write a front end to mint our $LSTETH basket and to redeem back to ETH as well. This is just like Liquity, where anyone can build a front end to mint/redeem $LUSD. We hope in the future to have many partnerships with people who will be enabling minting and redeeming our $LSTETH baskets, particularly from/to ETH.

In that sense, I think that we are talking about something that could easily get to several hundred million dollars, if not higher, of TVL very quickly, because it appeals to small and medium sized DAOs. It appeals to some extent to TradFi investors, but it also with these simple mint redeem function and the ability to mint stables, it appeals to very small, unbanked developing country savers who are just looking for a reliable place to save money, earn yield and occasionally mint some stables to make payments.

$LSTxxx PowerBaskets are potentially a very broad cross chain series of products. They can anchor PowerAgent on all EVM POS chains and therefore that’s going to be a big focus for us going forward together with the $LUSD stablecoin, which we think fits in. We fit very well with it, and it fits very well with us.

In summary, if you’re an Ethereum Node Operator, even a home staker running your own node, and you are earning extra ETH on staked $CVP from PowerAgent tasks , you can invest all your ETH right back in an auto managed max yield, min risk highly liquid and composable $LSTETH basket, and mint $LUSD stables whenever you need them. You really don’t need anything else (except maybe some $LINK ;>)

People who think that way and feel that way, those are the people we want in the PowerPool DAO contributing, because right now we need a lot more node runners and contributors. So with that, I will turn it open to questions. It’s an AMA, so please feel free. Ask us anything. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll tell you. So don’t be shy.

Q: What is PowerPool’s plan for NFTs?

Vasily: Automation for NFTs is a possible option, a possible scenario for PowerAgent, but I don’t know what types of automation tasks there will be for NFTs? There can maybe be some limit orders for buying something on OpenSea?

So what do you think, Gordon? Because it’s quite an odd question, a little bit aside from the main topic, but anyway, it’s about automation.

Gordon: I don’t think anyone knows the totality of automation tasks that are out there waiting to be done. Obviously for NFTs there’s probably some authentication tasks and other tasks that as long as it’s not too expensive, will be part of the market. That’s why I go back to saying people will not use ChainLink once $LINK moons because it becomes very expensive.

So there’ll be lots of very simple authentication type tasks. NFT authentication will be one segment of the automation market, but there is another similar potentially-related segment of the automation market that’s really interesting and really nobody knows a lot about: AI.

AI is now generating text, images and videos which no one knows where they came from or what they are. Authentication and anchoring AI outputs to NFTs is going to be something big. Obviously PowerPool AND PowerAgent can move in the direction of this emerging task demand. So if PowerAgent can already, or will soon be able to, authenticate linkage of AI to NFTs in a way that will be better and cheaper than our competitors, ChainLink and Gelato, we will definitely address this task market. There’s going to be a lot of tasks out there and if they pay well and we do it better than our competitors, we will definitely do it.

Q: So am I correct that the LST/D basket goal is to decrease the risk and get stable emission? That the main goal is to make a diversification across these different staking token options?

Vasily: Gordon, could you detail a bit more about the risks and the returns of LSTs? I think LST tokens are the hottest topic in the industry at this moment because everyone wants to make money but not face a lot of risks at the same time. Could you tell us more about the topic of LSTs?

Gordon: Yeah, first of all, the biggest market in DeFi is now officially the LST market. ETH TVL for LSTs is already greater than DEXes and lending sites and every other form of DeFi. And the size of the LST market will most likely double, maybe triple. So in the future, almost all DeFi will be conducted on the basis of LSTs. So your base holding will be staked yield bearing LSTs. And then the question is, what do you do with your LSTs? And especially, do you hold just one $LST, or a diversified basket?

Do you mint stables for payments? Do you use LST as collateral and leverage it up? What do you do? Your base holding used to be unstaked ETH. Now it’s going to be tokenized staked ETH expressed as LSTs. But as I mentioned earlier, the best way to hold LSTs is not to pick just one staked ETH token, like Lido or RocketPool. Because you won’t get maximum coverage of validators, or automatic extrinsic yield, or peg arbitrage. You will not get maximum liquidity on mint or redeem. You WILL get maximum smart contract risk and maximum slashing risk. So what you want to do instead is buy and HODL a max yield/min risk diversified automated LSTs basket token: $LSTETH.

And this is what PowerPool will be providing running on top of the general purpose PowerAgent network, not only in ETH, but also in native tokens of all of the other EVM POS chains that we deploy PowerAgent on. We will run these PowerBaskets as a way to not only guarantee fee income to PowerAgent node operators on each POS chain, but because as these PowerBaskets’ TVL grows, they earn approximately 0.5% as a fee to cover automation and gas and a management fee for the DAO Treasury. So these LST PowerBaskets and Vaults will attract TVL and generate significant automation fees for PowerAgent Keepers/nodes and yield for $CVP stakers.

PowerPool is a fair-lunch DAO, so all of the earnings will be distributed to $CVP stakers in one way or another. So if you’re a Keeper/node runner you’re getting (hopefully big) fees from the automation of the Jobs on the PowerVaults/Baskets. And if you are a $CVP staker you will also be getting your share of those DAO Treasury fees. Initially, when TVL of the PowerBaskets are low, the gas fees and the automation fees being paid to PowerAgent Keeper node runners will be higher as a proportion. But as the TVL grows (and keep in mind these LST PowerBaskets are $ multi-million, maybe even half billion TVL, I mean, who knows?) As the various LST PowerBaskets’ TVL increases, the gas fees are fixed. The gas costs are fixed, and node-runner job fees will increase only somewhat when the value of the transactions goes up, so at very large TVL, much of the PowerBasket 0.5% streaming fee will go straight to the PowerPool Treasury as management fees.

I think you can tell I kind of think it’s all a no-brainer the synergy between PowerAgent Network and LST baskets and the fee structures and the potential income associated with it. And I also think that there’s no bigger opportunity in DeFi and never will be a bigger opportunity in DeFi than the current expected doubling or tripling of liquid staking Ethereum LST TVL and the shift to LSTFi that many, if not most DeFi protocols will have to do.

Unlike many other passive ‘index’ tokens, where nobody was really very interested in passive, fixed weights and unfarmed thematic diversification, in the case of yield-bearing LSTs, diversification via PowerBaskets makes total sense. It’s higher yield, it’s lower risk, it’s more liquid. Anyone who wants to get into the details on $LSTETH and $LUCY, it is all on the Project Wiki, which is extremely detailed. There’s a full explanation of how the $LSTETH basket works. If PowerAgent can automate every single aspect of LST basket management, then other people will be very attracted and they will see this example of advanced of advanced functionality up and running and they will see the fee streams and job costs and they will realize, hey, I can launch my own automated multi-token baskets or vaults too.

Some projects may elect to build on top of our PowerBasket LST tokens, rather than reinvent the wheel themselves to work with LSTs. And anyone will be able to distribute our LST PowerBasket/Vault tokens via an unbranded UI widget to mint and redeem our LST tokens. So we could have mint/redeem interfaces for our LST baskets and vaults in every language and especially mint redeem partnerships in developing countries with, say, mobile phone operators or small banks or I don’t know who.

For small, unbanked, developing world savers, an $LSTETH basket is essentially their savings account. It’s their bank, it does everything they need and they don’t have to do anything because it’s pure passive income with stablecoin minting for payments. The PowerAgent network is doing all the work.

Q: How to join & contribute to the DAO?

Gordon: I would just like to close by answering the question many people have, which is “How can I help? The PowerPOol DAO is very undermanned. We don’t have all the contributors we need to execute the roadmap. Obviously, if you’re a Solidity developer, that would be great. If you’re a node runner who’s going to run an Ethereum node, it’s a no-brainer to add a PowerAgent Keeper node on top. It’s just pure extra ETH or BNB or GNO income.

But let’s say you’re a person who doesn’t code and who is not a designer, not a front end person, just a normal person who believes in the roadmap and $CVP, what can you do? The answer is “Much more than you think”.

The first thing is Twitter has published their algorithm. So we now know that anytime a tweet has a question and an answer, it gets elevated very quickly and many more people are going to see it. So if you follow the PowerPool Twitter accounts or my @GordonGekko_CVP account or whatever, when you see a tweet, ask a question, even if you know the answer, or you think you know the answer, ask a question. And, if you see someone do that, you can answer it. Check on Discord to make sure that you know the answer. Okay? But answer it, because questions and answers drive those Twitter impressions way up.

Even more important now, which has never been true in the past, the most important thing to do right now for the average person, the average person who believes in $CVP and wants to see it go up, the most important thing you can do now is start training AI.

Search engines are being replaced in browsers by AI interfaces. If you ask the question, what is PowerPool? What is PowerAgent? What is $LSTETH? What is $LUCY? It currently doesn’t give you very good answers. And that’s because it needs to be trained. So the Project Wiki has tons and tons of text, questions, answers, stuff like that. Just go to AI, ask a question, look at its answer, correct it, add more input, cut-paste. It’s just all cut-paste training. And the more people who do that, the better the answers eventually on AI.

Because the next generation of DAO members, Keepers and $CVP investors are going to be people who go to AI, and ask, What is PowerPool? What is PowerAgent? What is $LSTETH? What is $LUCY? If a lot of us do this, you will see from week to week, month to month, if enough members of the DAO do this, we will all see the answers improve. And if the answers improve, we will get more people contributing. It’s a positive flywheel. So don’t think that because you’re not a coder or designer or very technical, don’t think there’s nothing you can do. There’s a lot you can do, especially in terms of boosting Twitter and training AI.

Closing statements

Vasily: So I think we have provided a lot of information and some comprehensive answers to some of the hottest topics. We can end this first of the new series of AMAs here. We are planning a bigger AMA with our DAppNode software partner next week. Hopefully, it will happen next week. There we will present an easier and more detailed pathway to becoming a PowerAgent Keeper/noderunner, that is, how to launch our node, how to participate in the network, what is the purpose of the onboarding Sepolia testnet, and how to get some $CVP grants from test net participation. I think that we will cover them next week on the DAppNode AMA. We are finalizing all the integration stuff and public announcements. Now just stay tuned for the next weekend.

So Gordon, what are the next steps? I think let’s close this AMA. Let’s work on the announcements.

Gordon: Obviously there will be a formal announcement of the node bundling partnership with DAppNode and I think there will also be an onboarding incentivization program for the next round of PowerAgent Keepers/node runners. Once PowerAgent is running effectively on mainnet we will start to roll out some of the asset management products on top of it to show the world what PowerAgent can do to and generate early fees for the Keepers/ node runners and basically kickstart the flywheel of innovation in terms of the detailed PowerBasket/Vault tasks that PowerAgent can actually do.

So yes, I think that we can end now. The main near term goal is to launch the PowerAgent v2 network on Mainnet.

Vasily: So we just need to make several announcements and I hope that everybody here will be able to participate in running a PowerAgent Keeper node. You should be able to do it in one click. All you need to do is install the special operational decentralized node bundle. It’s quite easy. We will share all details about the project. Soon we can share with our node bundling partner because the announcement is not live yet but we’ll share all this stuff and it’s quite easy. From their DAppStore you can install and run both the Ethereum node and also run the PowerAgent node. They will be interconnected if you run an Ethereum node, automatically. We hope it will be quite a smooth experience even for a non-technical person. If you participate in testnets, we will provide testing tokens on the Sepolia test network. And after that, we will be providing real $CVP grants to the 1st 100 testnet nodes for running PowerAgent on the mainnet. So it is easy, you just need to dedicate maybe 1 hour of your time to all of this.

So, Gordon, let’s finish the AMA. I think we shared all the information and we’ll go for the test net AMA next week with all the details about the partnership or the node launch and all this kind of stuff.

Gordon: Yeah, the only other thing I would add is that we could use some help translating. We need particularly Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, we don’t have enough translation capacity. We’re okay in Russian, Turkish and Portuguese.

But PowerPool is a global endeavor. We will haveKeeper node runners in every language zone and to support them we need more translation help.

Vasily: I think I will also make some announcements on the Community Forum to attract more attention and make a Twitter post about some different languages that are still missing. Of course, we have a lot of English on the Project Wiki, plus Turkish, Russian, and some Portuguese, but yeah, we will need several others. Let’s do a Forum announcement and maybe also provide for some Ecosystem grants for ongoing translations of documentation, really quality ones because there were some translations in the past but they were not as good as they could be from my point of view.

So yeah, let’s work on it. Thanks, everyone for listening. Thanks for joining. We hope to see you all as PowerAgent node runners one day. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions on Discord or Telegram channels. We are trying to deliver.

PowerPool is really interesting tech, an interesting concept, and a lot of innovation, not just a generic forking with a shitcoin added as a lot of projects try to do. We are doing a good thing and I think it should work well. Let’s all test it together now on testnet, and launch on mainnet soon. Bye, everyone.

Gordon: Thank you everyone for listening. Please read our Notion Project Wiki, it’s probably the best project wiki in all of crypto in terms of coverage and comprehensiveness, and there are also various language versions, like Turkish, etc. but again we could really use some more Translators, especially for Asian languages. You can volunteer to help with translations or ask questions and improve existing translations on Discord

And thank you all for listening.